When I hit STOP on the broken record of my alarm clock this morning, a tsunami of homesickness drenched me.
My body got out of bed and went for a run. The feeling went running with me.
As I felt the cool morning air tickling the back of my neck and smelt the freshly sprinkled grass, the feeling breaststroked away.
Do you know the feeling I’m talking about?
I remember when I was at primary school, probably about 5 or 6 years old, the feeling would occasionally spring up inside of me.
For a few minutes I only wanted to be at home with my mum eating a boiled egg and listening to a Kylie Minogue record.
Since then, I have lived in many homes.
Yet homesickness is not necessarily about a specific place.
For me it’s more akin to an entire physical yearning to feel safe and whole.
We associate feeling safe and whole with particular people, places and experiences in our lives.
But that feeling is actually YOU feeling your true nature:
No separation between you and everything else.
No time. No fears. No egoic conception of yourself.
The feeling is produced by you.
This begs the question:
If everything is impermanent, is it OK to feel that “home” is with specific people, places and experiences?
Absolutely.
As long as you know in your heart of hearts (and you do), that your ability to feel at home doesn’t depend on any of them.
All the people, places and experiences with whom you have felt “home” are with you and will always be with you in the eternal now.
«Now» is not a place in the human-invented concept of “time”: It is home.
And homesickness is one of those magnificent non-rational gifts that guides us back again.
When do you feel at home?